Joke ringtone is inexplicable phenomenon
By Adrian Turpin
Britain is set to have its first number one hit inspired by a ringtone. Adrian
Turpin traces the growth of a phenomenon from Scandinavian internet joke to
international irritant.

London: It wasn't quite an apology. But almost. "I don't know what to say," said
Erik Wernquist. "Really I don't. Some people obviously think this thing is worth
paying for."

History has a precedent for Swedish innovators who have had cause to regret
their creations. Alfred Nobel endowed his peace prize as an act of contrition
for developing dynamite. Wernquist's crime against humanity is of a different
order, although Britain's commuters, teachers, parents and television viewers
might disagree.

He is the man who put flesh on the Crazy Frog ringtone and began its
transformation from a Scandinavian internet joke to a multi-million-pound
international annoyance.

If you hadn't seen or heard Crazy Frog (which seems hard to believe), you would
not immediately take him for a frog.

Unlike most amphibians, he is blue not green, walks on two legs and has a belly
button. The latter seems a bit superfluous for a creature hatched from spawn,
but then so does the 1950s-style motorcycle cap.

Between the creature's legs there used to hang a small blue set of genitals
(more like an epiglottis than a penis), but after a deluge of complaints to the
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) this has been discreetly covered with a
black blob, at least on television.

Crazy Frog's rivet - now playing on a train or bus near you - is the constipated
phut of a badly serviced East European car driven by a boy racer who has just
passed his test: "a ding ding ding dinga ding ding..."

The fact that this makes anyone over the age of 18 want to stick their fist
through the television screen and grab him and his little blue nadgers has
clearly not harmed his prospects. To date, the company Jamster has made more
than £10m from people downloading Crazy Frog ringtones.

As if that weren't enough, this week a CD version of the song produced by the
German dance act Bass Bumpers has been outselling Coldplay's new single by more
than four to one.

More than 400 000 copies of the single - which splices the frog theme with
Harold Faltermayer's Beverly Hills Cop theme tune, Axel F - have been ordered,
according to the label Gut Records.

On Sunday, Britain will have its first-ever ringtone-inspired number one.

"Kids obviously find it cute and cool," said Gennaro Castaldo, a spokesman for
the HMV record shops, attempting to explain the phenomenon, "but students and
even office workers seem to be drawn by its kitsch, ironic appeal. The only real
issue is whether the record label can press enough copies to keep up with the
huge demand."

No one has been more surprised at Crazy Frog's success than Daniel Malmedahl, a
24-year-old computer salesman from Gothenburg in Sweden. Malmedahl was 17 when
he decided to record an impression of his friends' motorbikes on his computer.
Why? Just because.

"We had mad laughs because it's so characteristic, this two-stroke engine sound.
My friends found it funny when I started imitating it," Malmedahl said.

Before long, a friend had posted it on the internet where it was seen by a
Swedish television researcher who invited Malmedahl to "perform" the sound live,
and that is where ordinarily his 15 minutes of fame might have stopped.